Healthy living & lifestyle
food supply chain, surge in the prevalence of zoonotic diseases among humans, rise in vegan population, and increase in awareness regarding animal welfare and animal cruelty’.
In 2021, the documentary Seaspiracy stormed into the Netflix top ten worldwide. It called attention to overfishing with its huge claim that the oceans will be ‘virtually empty’ by 2048; to contaminants like mercury in fish; to the plastic pollution caused by fishing nets; to the waste produced by fish farming and to the slavery that’s rife within the fishing industry. After the documentary aired, it was reported that 42% of viewers were considering cutting fish from their diet. Whether or not they followed through with that intention, any step away from seafood is good news for the fake fish brands. By 2031, the market is expected to reach a very respectable $1.3bn, representing a compound growth rate of 42.3% a year. “It’s a matter of being essential,” says Heather Mills, founder of VBites Food, which currently sells two vegan fish products. “Seas are overfished, destroying the seabed. Over 40% of fish the public are eating are swimming in their own faeces in fish farms with zero omega-3. Even though there is omega- 3 in fish, it originally comes from algae, so farmed fish have absolutely nothing unless it’s added into the water. It’s a ridiculous concept.”
Technological leaps
So why exactly has plant-based fish struggled until now and how are manufacturers attempting to fill the gap in the market? To answer these questions, we might start by looking at regular plant-based meat and why its success has proven so hard to emulate. The most used manufacturing method is extrusion, in which vegetable proteins are ground down into a paste and forced through a tube at high pressure. This technique works well if you’re trying to make a burger patty, nugget or mince – or even a crab cake or fish finger. But because it degrades the texture of the protein, it isn’t suitable for replicating something more fibrous, like a whole cut of fish or meat. In recent years, new processing technologies have emerged, which create a more meat-like protein structure. These include high moisture extrusion cooking (HMEC) and shear cell technology, in which high pressure is applied to plant-based proteins, breaking down cell walls. “We have a device with two cylinders, and the inner cylinder moves, creating a simple shear field. If the properties of the material are right, you might get some orientation in the material, and if you manipulate them a bit more you might form fibres,” says Professor Atze Jan van der Goot, a food process engineer at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, who has developed a new shear cell technology for use in plant-
Ingredients Insight /
www.ingredients-insight.com
based meat. That said, it isn’t so easy to create plant- based fish with these techniques. Some are trying – Van der Goot’s former student Birgit Dekkers has started a company, Rival Foods, that uses shear cell technology on a commercial scale. Alongside other ‘high quality plant-based whole cuts’, the team has a tuna steak under development. However, Van der Goot says this will pose additional processing challenges. “Fish is relatively high in liquid oils that oxide
quickly, and it’s a bit more flaky in structure compared to the fibrous appearance of meat,” he says. “That requires a different technique. You see companies using 3D printing for instance.” Recently, a vegan ‘salmon’ fillet became the first ever 3D-printed food product to hit supermarket shelves. The product from the Austrian start-up Revo Food has been created through a new extrusion technology combined with 3D printing. According to the company, this ‘allows the seamless integration of fats into a fibrous protein matrix – leading to a new generation of authentic seafood alternatives with the typical flakiness and juicy fibres of fish fillets’. New School Foods, another start-up but this time from Canada, has developed a proprietary ‘muscle fibre and scaffolding platform’ to create whole-cut, plant- based salmon. The technique involves something called ‘directional freezing’ in which a scaffold is created through thawing a frozen gel. The scaffold is filled
Among their range of plant-based seafoods, one of VBites’ most popular is the a cod- style fish fillet made from konjac.
$42.1m
The generated profit made by the plant-based seafood industry in 2021.
Allied Market Research 55
VBites
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